Latest News

Coca-Cola Digitalise Happiness

Drink of a Thousand Smiles

nymag.com

Coca-Cola have always been kind of ingenious where their
advertising is concerned, from bottles with your name on them to basically reinventing Christmas. They’ve done their
utmost to make the brand so synonymous with joy and happiness that you almost
forget that the act of drinking a soft drink is unlikely to have any positive
effect on your mood. Other than making you belch, which is obviously hilarious.

In a new venture, the colossal drinks company have
registered URLs for all the emojis relating to happiness, from the classic :) to the versatile but nonsensical
:P all the way to the overpoweringly arousing ;). Typing any of them into a URL
bar with .ws as a domain will lead you to ‘emoticoke.com’, which allows you to
build an emoji URL of your very own, combing 3 different symbols. The link can
lead to any website of your choosing.

The campaign was spearheaded by Coca-Cola Puerto Rico, so
for the time being it’s all exclusively in Spanish (and doesn’t work anywhere
else), but if it takes off in Puerto Rico it could well become a global thing.
Emojis are, after all, kind of a universal language, despite being as open to
interpretation as they are, especially where the younger audience are
concerned, the people Coke ultimately want to reach.

adweek.com

The .ws domain name (actually the extension for Samoa) is
used because the symbols aren’t accepted as URLs on most standard domains. Coke
claim that the letters were chosen because they can stand for ‘We Smile’ but I
think it’s a safe bet it’s more to do with the former than the latter.

Coke could use the points, to be honest; their last charm
offensive was centered on the #MakeItHappy hashtag, which involved encouraging
people to tag negative tweets so that they could turn them into cute ASCII
images of animals and whatever else. It backfired when Gawker caught wind of it
and used a Twitter bot to generate a whole series of images made up of
lettering from Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

More shockingly, Coca-Cola company offices were attacked by
protesters in Chilpancingo in Mexico last week. Gas bombs were thrown, causing
substantial damage and injuring several people. Two company employees were also
briefly held hostage by the demonstrators. Coke might well be trying on some
level to improve its image in Central and South America in the wake of this
incident, as well as simply focus-testing a potential worldwide campaign.

Callum Davies

Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him@CallumAtSMF

About Social Songbird

Keeping you up to date on social media, digital marketing, apps, news & reviews.
Social media, and digital marketing as a whole, are rapidly and constantly changing, adapting to new developments at an ever increasing rate. Just keeping up to date can be a nightmare.
Our team of writers know their field, and keep an ear to the ground. We aim to keep you informed of all recent developments in the online world, and teach you a little something along the way.
So whether you just want to stay connected, or gain some knowledge for yourself, the Social Songbird will keep on singing!
More articles are posted every day so keep checking back!
Join the discussion on Twitter - #SocialSongbird
Or contact us directly - @SongbirdWriters

Counterterrorism efforts on social media A new report by the Woodrow Wilson Centre’s Gabriel Weimann suggests that terrorists are using s...

Meet The Team

Sam Bonson - Editor/Content Writer

Sam is an aspiring novelist with a passion for fantasy and crime thrillers. Currently working as Editor of Social Songbird, he hopes to one day drop that 'aspiring' prefix. Follow him @Songbird_Sam

Laura Sewell - Content Writer

An aspiring journalist, Laura is our Content Writer. Pop-punk gig-goer and drag queen enthusiast, Laura is working her way into the industry with a love of writing about anything and everything in tow. Find her daily musings on twitter @Songbird_Lauras

Dan Swann - Graphic Designer

Dan has a hard earned degree in Graphic design and a love for technology. He thrives on science fiction films and computer games and often delves into astronomy. He’ll also one day finish reading all of Einstein’s famous papers. Follow him @DanAtSMF!doctype>